Today’s post is the first in what I hope will become a semi-regular series about exoplanets: planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. I’ve decided to start with an exoplanet named Orbitar.

In December of 2015, the exoplanet designated 42 Draconis b was officially renamed Orbitar following a public naming contest held by the International Astronomy Union. Orbitar is a gas giant planet orbiting a red giant star approximately 315 light-years away in the constellation Draco.

Discovering Orbitar

The gravitational pull between planets and the stars they orbit causes stars to wobble in place. When the star 42 Draconis was found to wobble at a regular interval of 479 days, it was determined that a large planet with a 479 day orbital period was likely responsible.

Further calculations determined that this planet had an average orbital distance of 1.19 AU and an orbital eccentricity of 38%. The planet’s total mass was estimated to be equivalent to at least 3.88 Jupiters, give or take 0.85 Juptiers.

Life on Orbitar’s Moons?

According to the Brevard Astronomical Society, the group that won the IAU naming contest for Orbitar, “this closely orbiting gas planet could possibly host moons with Earth-like characteristics in the so-called habitable zone.”

Personally, I feel that’s a bit over-optimistic. At an orbital distance of 1.19 AU, Orbitar and its hypothetical moons would certainly would be within our Sun’s habitable zone, but 42 Draconis (which was renamed Fafnir in the IAU contest) is over twice our Sun’s age and has entered the red giant phase of its life cycle.

I may be wrong about this, but I’d expect that Fafnir’s habitable zone would lie well beyond the 1.19 AU distance. Orbitar’s moons (if they exist) should have been charred to cinders by now.

However, that still leaves us with the possibility that Orbitarian life could have existed at some point in the distant past, when Fafnir was still young and still a main sequence star like our Sun.

P.S.: As far as I can tell, the name Planety McPlanetface was not submitted to the IAU’s planet naming contest.